Fringe: Domo arigato

So we're going to just strap this prop from Season 1 onto your head ... (Fox)

Having collected “Michael” the Baby Observer by saying a few magic words, the Fringies have brought him back to the lab, and are like, “Sooooo, now what?” After Pacey determines that Michael doesn’t have any Observer tech shoved up his neck, the team begins questioning him.

Fringies: “Remember that one time you helped us catch a bad man?”

Michael: Blank stare.

Fringies: “How about The Mysterious Donald? Remember someone named The Mysterious Donald?”

Michael: Blank stare.

Fringies: “And the plan, what about the plan?”

Michael: Blank stare.

And so it’s not terribly surprising when Bishop is ready to comatize Michael and poke around in his brain or maybe jam some electrodes into the base of his skull and pump him full of drugs, SOMETHING, ANYTHING, to get him to communicate already. Instead, they are just going to furrow their brows and wonder why the last time Olivia and Michael met, they had a connection and a means to communicate with one another, but that this time around, for no discernible reason, the connection appears to be broken. HMMM. WHAT COULD IT BE? (Plot. The answer is: plot.)

At the Ministry of Science, Mrs. Roboto is playing with a hologram in her office when she receives a call from Olivia, realizes that her office might not be the best place to have this particular conversation, and explains that she will call her back once she leaves the office. Soon after, Kahl Himmler and some Brown Shirts storm into her office, question Mrs. Roboto’s loyalist secretary as to Mrs. Roboto’s whereabouts, and then hook up some sort of thingie to the office windows so as to listen to Mrs. Roboto’s phone call from the past, sure.

Mrs. Roboto meets the Fringies and Michael in Brooklyn somewhere, and informs them that she has a super secret black lab nearby that they can use. Pacey and Mrs. Roboto then have a heart-to-heart about Bishop and his intention to have Mrs. Roboto remove his brain pieces as soon as the plan is complete. Pacey is all: Don’t do it! even though he’s been though this with Bishop once before and it was really for the best, I think we can all agree. But Mrs. Roboto argues that Bishop understands that anything worth fighting for comes at a cost. Because foreshadowing.

The group goes to what looks like a garage, but is actually a super secret underground black lab, filled with all kinds of toys from Massive Dynamics and a bunch of dead Observers in glass chambers. Mrs. Roboto explains that the Resistance used these Observers to try to figure out how they read minds in the hopes that they could come up with their own similar technology. It didn’t work. But! Maybe using the technology they used to understand the minds of the Observers (presumably pre-dead), maybe they can use with Michael to understand his. Something about a helmet with lights that somehow translate the electrical activity of thoughts into “words and images they can understand.” SCIENCE! Which is basically the same thought helmet that Bishop used on Michael 20 years ago, but I suppose no one remembers that because it was a different timeline, but hey, wouldn’t Pacey and Olivia at least be like OH YEAH, this didn’t work very well last time, either? But they don’t? For some reason? ANYWAY. And so they bring Michael into the room, and he pointedly looks at one of the covered chambers, because FORESHADOWING.

(Wait, why is this girl singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on the ukelele in this commercial. OH WAIT, BECAUSE THIS AIRED FOUR DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Yeah, sorry again about how late this is, guys.)

Pacey straps the thought helmet onto Michael and they ask the Baby Observer if he remembers the plan, and Michael’s brain responds, but Mrs. Roboto and her software can’t understand the “words and images.” BECAUSE IT DIDN’T WORK LAST TIME, REMEMBER? But anyway, new plan: tinker with the software, get another thought helmet from the Ministry of Science (shame the super secret underground black lab didn’t have more than one) and let Michael get into one of their brains, I suppose to do the telepathic equivalent of staring blankly at them. All they have to do is contact that one guy at the Ministry of Science that helped them out before and he’ll hook them up with the second thought helmet.

Only problem with that: Kahl Himmler has gathered all the Ministry of Science employees for a little questioning, having correctly guessed that Mrs. Roboto had some inside assistance. Uh-oh!

And that’s why when Mrs. Roboto tries to call her minion, he can’t exactly take her call. Looks like the Fringies will just have to break into the joint and steal the thought helmet themselves. With AsteriskAstrid’s remote help (because they had to give her something to do in this episode), they bust into the warehouse and then rummage around it for a while looking for the thought helmet. Meanwhile, in a room overlooking the warehouse Kahl Himmler has decided to conduct his interviews, and just as the Fringies are getting their hands on that thought helmet, Olivia notices Kahl Himmler squishing around in Minion’s head.

Mrs. Roboto, having compromised her location, assures Michael that everything is totally cool, no worries. In exchange, he touches her face and she is all ZOMGBBQEPIPHANEEZ. Michael then looks towards the security cameras where the Brown Shirts and Kahl Himmler are headed their way. Mrs. Roboto hides Michael, somewhere, just as Kahl Himmler and his Brown Shirts storm the joint and start tearing the place apart looking for the Fringies.

After finding the preserved Observers, Kahl Himmler is as mortified as an Observer can get, THE RESISTANCE ARE A BUNCH OF ANIMALS. Kahl Himmler then reads Mrs. Roboto’s thoughts, notes that she’s thinking about the Baby Observer, and wonders as to why he’s so important? OH, WHAT, A LITTLE KID SCARES YOU? retorts Mrs. Roboto. Kahl Himmler explains that actually, no, it’s just that Baby Observer is a genetic mistake who was scheduled to be destroyed until he suddenly went missing. Michael’s like the Observer Amelia Earhart, and Kahl Himmler’s just curious as to why the Fringies think he’s so important. When the Brown Shirts can’t find anyone else in the super secret underground black lab, Kahl Himmler’s like, SIGH, FINE, wheel her out of here, we’ll do a deeper brain squish elsewhere. But Mrs. Roboto isn’t scared, and Kahl Himmler knows it, and asks her what’s up with that. Mrs. Roboto goes into a long soliloquy about how the Observers are more like lizards than humans and at least we can love and we’re more evolved than you and nyah. She then whips out a gun and waves it around for a while and Kahl Himmler’s like, so what, you can’t hurt me with your silly little gun and your silly little bullets, and Mrs. Roboto is all, ORLY? and shoots herself in the head. OH NOOOOOOES, MRS. ROBOTOOOOOOES!!!

And so the Fringies return to the super secret underground black lab to find the place ransacked and Mrs. Roboto in a pool of blood. SADNESS. Bishop cries and that makes me cry and there is much crying, but not by Olivia, who manages to find Michael safely tucked away in one of the dead Observer chambers (the same one he pointedly stared at earlier). Upon seeing Mrs. Roboto’s body, tears stream from his eyes, and Bishop’s all “He’s crying.” (But he’s not. Not really.)

Back in the lab, Bishop and Michael wear the thought helmets, and Bishop instructs Michael to touch his nose if he understands him, and he does and everyone’s like YIPPEEE! but then Michael takes off his thought helmet and touches Bishop’s face. Bishop is suddenly flooded with memories, ending with him approaching a man in an apartment, who, upon being touched on the shoulder turns, and is September? But with hair? And Bishop is all ZOMGBBQEPIPHANEEZ, September is The Mysterious Donald! (Aaaaand, maybe a lot of trouble could have been prevented if MICHAEL HAD JUST DONE THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?)

R.I.P. MRS. ROBOTO. It’s interesting, Mrs. Roboto was always one of my favorite characters on this series, especially and particularly in the beginning when she seemed to be antagonistic and maybe even evil. It didn’t always appear that the writers knew what to do with her (remember that one time when they basically suggested that she and Col. Abaddon were romantically involved? and then they never mentioned it again? that was weird), but they never let her devolve into a caricaturish villain — nor was she ever drawn as a simple helpmeet. She was complicated, as were her relationships with both Olivia and Bishop, but thanks to Blair Brown’s strong performance, Mrs. Roboto was always believable. And though I feel like she was sacrificed by the writers to raise the stakes in these remaining episodes, I was happy she died a hero’s death. I suppose. To Mrs. Roboto!

As for the rest of this episode, it was a plot-driven one, and thus there’s not much to unpack. Not to be a whiny complainer, always, but aside from Mrs. Roboto’s demise, and the always heartbreaking flashes of Bishop’s past, this episode left me a little cold. I am irritated to no end by the contrivance that Michael suddenly can no longer communicate with Olivia because ?? I understand that in terms of plot, it would be considerably less interesting to have Michael just suddenly start jotting down clues for the Fringies to follow in their pursuit of the plan, as he did in “Inner Child,” but I’m not a little irritated that they couldn’t come up with even a plausible explanation as to why he couldn’t. Did it have something to do with the different timelines? Was it because Olivia had depleted her stores of Kortexiphan? WHO KNOWS? But maybe they should have come up with something, anything, to help explain it.

I will add that judging by the next few episodes — which for our purposes is spoilery but what do I care, they aired a month ago — and the way he looked at that Observer chamber, the same one he would eventually hide in, it would seem that Michael is operating from a sort of “big picture” perspective; that he understands how everything is supposed to unfold and he is doing his part in that scheme. Everything happens for a reason and all that. And perhaps that’s why he’s not communicating with them, because events have to unfold in this particular sequence. But it still strikes me as a case of if not lazy, at least distracting writing. And it is especially irritating because it’s not as though Michael’s ability to communicate isn’t crucial to the episode: he chooses to communicate with Mrs. Roboto and Bishop, just not until after a bunch of people have been killed FOR NO GOOD REASON.

Eh. Anyway. Like I said, this episode was a plot-mover and not particularly heavy in themes or symbolism (which is probably why I’m being so cranky). The most important thing to take away from the episode is this notion of clarity, the sudden understanding of the grand design and one’s place within it — including coming to understand the need for sacrificing oneself for the greater good. It’s what is known in the monomyth as “apotheosis,” or an expansion of consciousness the hero experiences towards the end of his journey. After Michael touches them, Mrs. Roboto and Bishop both experience literally an expansion of their consciousnesses — allowing Mrs. Roboto to calmly and without regret sacrifice herself for the cause, and for Bishop to finally FINALLY remember who the heck The Mysterious Donald is. Even if that could have been accomplished in the first few minutes of the episode and prevented Mrs. Roboto from having to off herself. THANKS FOR NOTHING, BABY OBSERVER.